| Moonbeam idea: Use lasers as switched fabrics |
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| March 2, 2007 | |
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Now that it's public, I can brag that a buddy of mine is knee deep in developing a new type of interconnect for server clusters. Camas, WA startup Lightfleet broke their silence today in a Wall Street Journal article that describes how the company is using lasers to create what must be a fabric-like switch to interconnect clustered microprocessors.
According to the WSJ article, the company will use Intel processors to build a new class of servers. Though pundits are weighing in on both sides of the argument - is this better than gigabit electrical interconnects? - the possibilities for (literally) quantum cluster improvements are intriguing. But it begs the question: can Lightfleet's technology be applied to the myriad VME fabric interconnects such as VITA 41 (VXS) or VITA 46 (VPX)? C2 |
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written by Konrad, March 05, 2007
Sort of reminiscent of http://www.smallformfactors.com/pdfs/Hardent.Spr05.pdf, where an optical bus extender was used by Hardent to "seamlessly link remote I/O cards with the CPU in a PC/104 stack" (ok -- not LASER, and wasn't a true fabric, but interesting nonetheless).